Prince William and Catherine Middleton became engaged in October 2010 in Kenya, East Africa, during a 10-day trip to the Lewa Wildlife Conservancy to celebrate Prince William’s passing his RAF helicopter search and rescue course. Clarence House announced the engagement on 16 November 2010. Prince William gave Middleton the engagement ring that had belonged to his mother, Diana, Princess of Wales. He said about his decision to give his fiancée his mother’s ring, “It’s very special to me. As Kate’s very special to me now, it was right to put the two (Catherine and Diana) together. It was my way of making sure my mother didn’t miss out on today and the excitement, and the fact that we’re going to spend the rest of our lives together.” The couple married in Westminster Abbey on 29 April 2011 (St. Catherine’s Day) with the day declared a bank holiday in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Estimates of the global audience for the wedding ranged around 300 million or more, whilst 26 million watched the event live in Britain alone.
In October, several months after the wedding, Commonwealth leaders pledged that they would implement changes in British royal succession law to allow daughters of future monarchs to have equal rights to the throne.
On 3 December 2012, St James’ Palace announced that the Duchess was pregnant with her first child and had been admitted to the private King Edward VII’s Hospital Sister Agnes in London, suffering from hyperemesis gravidarum where she remained for three days.
Middleton was formally introduced to public life on 24 February 2011, two months before the wedding, when she and Prince William attended a lifeboat-naming ceremony in Trearddur, Anglesey, in North Wales. A day later they appeared in St Andrews to launch the university’s 600th anniversary celebrations. On 16 February 2011, Clarence House announced that the Duke and Duchess’s first royal tour of Canada would take place in July 2011.
In May 2011, shortly after the wedding, Clarence House announced that the Duke and Duchess would extend their tour to visit California. This was to be the Duchess of Cambridge’s first visit to the United States.
The Duke and Duchess meet with U.S. President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama at Buckingham Palace a few weeks after the wedding.
The Duchess’s first official engagement after the wedding came in May, when she and her husband met with Barack Obama, the President of the United States, and First Lady Michelle. In June 2011, the Duke and Duchess presented medals to members of the Irish Guards.
On 26 October, Kate undertook her first solo event for In Kind Direct, stepping in for the Prince of Wales who was in Saudi Arabia. On 2 November, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge visited the UNICEF Supply Division Centre for supplying food to malnourished African children in Copenhagen, Denmark.
On St Patrick’s day, 17 March 2012, the Duchess carried out the traditional awarding of shamrocks to the Irish Guards at their base in Aldershot; this was her first solo military engagement. On 19 March she gave her first speaking engagement for the opening of the Treehouse, a new children’s hospice opened by EACH, a charity of which she is a patron.
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